New Agent Representation and New Projects

November 14, 2011

Just a bit of official news: Ann and I are now represented by Sally Harding from the Cooke Agency. I’m happy to forward any inquiries about book rights or new projects to her, but the international rights division can be contacted at rights at cookeinternational.com and the Cooke Agency’s general email is agents at cookeagency.ca. We’ve known Sally for awhile, referred writers to her, and we are happy to be represented by her. (Also thrilled that her clients include Karen Lord and Jesse Bullington.)

With The Weird anthology having taken up all of our time, we’ve been between projects, but I can say that Ann is beginning preliminary work on two anthologies she will be editing solo, we’re sending out the bestiary antho soon (mentioned on this blog in the past), and we are together working on the ultimate, huge time travel fiction anthology, mostly reprints. In terms of my own fiction, I’m continuing on the Journals of Doctor Mormeck, finishing up Borne, and beginning to collaborate with Karin Lowachee on another project.

In addition, The Situation web comic with Eric Orchard is in the final stages of lettering, and will go up on the Tor.com website soonish. My other project with Eric, Bellysnatcher, is about one-third completed, and is based on a notebook of paintings and drawings he sent me. I also expect art from Richard A. Kirk in the next few months to start on Fungicide: New Tales of Ambergris.

Wonderbook: The Essential Illustrated Guide to Writing Fantastical Fiction, for Abrams Image, is now scheduled for spring 2013, giving me a little more time to finish it off. John Coulthart is the designer on that project.

Meanwhile, Weirdfictionreview.com has turned out to be a big success and will be a nexus for our other efforts over the coming years. This week we’ve already posted work by Leena Krohn and the latest episode of the web comic. Tomorrow, Michal Ajvaz, with Kafka on Wednesday.

As Ann and I go forward, we are eager to balance and realistically pursue our various passions, which basically take three forms: to be of use in preserving the history of fantastical fiction and adding to a general understanding of it, especially the weirder stuff, to continue to write the fiction that is most personal to me in conjunction with Ann’s love for finding and publishing great fiction, and to be of use to the future of this kind of fiction through efforts like the Shared Worlds SF/F teen writing workshop.

Obviously, this is all a lot of work and a lot of things to keep balanced, and we’re indebted to the wonderful people who have been willing to help us with much of it. This has made it a lot easier to make various efforts a reality, and we’ll be specifically mentioning people soon.

One casuality of other projects, however, has been the Last Drink Bird Head service awards, which we simply were not able to get off the ground this year. We promise to find the resources to resurrect it next year.

Congratulations on the new agency! This reminds me of a question I’ve had for a while now — does having a non-US agent create complications for a US author? I can make a stab at your answer now, but I’d be interested in your thoughts. I’ve been ruthlessly crossing off Canadian and UK agencies without giving them due consideration; did I done wrong?

I think that as long as the agency is London or NYC based or, like the Cooke Agency, has strong ties to both NYC and London, you’re fine. We also like that the Cooke Agency has personal connections to West Coast publishers.

What you don’t want to get into is a situation where your agent doesn’t personally know a lot of the relevant editors in NYC and/or London.

If I can say this without sounding like a butt-kiss, I see you and Ann as two of the most business-savvy creative types in the field, and I really appreciate the work you’ve done on demystifying the writing and publishing world(s). I’m sure I’m not the only one.

That’s kind of you to say. Being inside of the whirlwind that is VanderCentral, we’ve no idea how we come off!

About Jeff VanderMeer

Author photo by Kyle Cassidy.

Jeff VanderMeer recently served as the 2016-2017 Trias Writer-in-Residence for Hobart-William Smith College. His latest novel is Borne, out from MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, which Colson Whitehead called “a thorough marvel.” He is also known for his critically acclaimed NYT-bestselling Southern Reach trilogy from FSG,which won the Shirley Jackson Award and Nebula Award. The trilogy also prompted theNew Yorkerto call the author “the weird Thoreau” and has been acquired by publishers in 35 other countries, with Paramount Pictures releasing a movie in 2018. VanderMeer’s nonfiction has appeared in theNew York Times, theGuardian, the Atlantic.com, Vulture, Esquire.com, and theLos Angeles Times. He has taught at the Yale Writers’ Conference, lectured at MIT, Brown, and the Library of Congress, and serves as the co-director of Shared Worlds, a unique teen writing camp. You can contact him at press info at vandermeercreative.com. More...